Posted
by
Zonk
on Friday March 02, 2007 @02:38PM
from the that-is-a-serious-buzz-harsher dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to a memo being reported on by Information week, the US Department of Transportation has issued a moratorium on upgrading Microsoft products. Concerns over costs and compatability issues has lead the federal agency to prevent upgrades from XP to Vista, as well as to stop users from moving to IE 7 and Office 2007. As the article says, 'In a memo to his staff, DOT chief information officer Daniel Mintz says he has placed "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrades as "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."'"

Where I work we just switched to XP from Windows 2000 less than 2 years ago. We won't switch to Vista anytime in the near future (my guess is three years at least). This isn't a story, it's standard practice. In order to upgrade, you need to do a lot of testing and updating software, especially in-house apps. If they were using Linux, they wouldn't update the kernel as soon as it was available either.

Most likely upgrade path for us is to linux - but only when we either change our accounting package to one supported on that platform, or Intuit ports to linux, or Crossover Office fully supports the latest QB enterprise.

Second likely path would be an OSX server -if and only if the price and licensing were not as heinous as they are with M$.

Maintenance (3 years of free upgrades, for 10.5-6, etc.) is another $1000, and entirely worth it.

So initial license purchase on top of the hardware is $1000 if you want 3 years of major versions of os x server. From past experience, that saves you $1000, because 2 more updates will happen in the next 3 years.

You are looking at $4,000 from apple vs $4313 from dell, but the dell only comes with 5 CALs (bare minimum 1u dual dual core xenon servers).

I work as a contractor for the FAA, which is under the DOT, and around here, Windows XP is a brand new thing. We just switched from Windows 2000 less than a year ago, for the reasons you stated.

I have no doubt that the FAA will switch to Vista a some point, but it will likely be around the time the next version of Windows comes out. I'm not holding out much hope for a switch to Linux then, either, as most of our in-house apps are.NET, VB 6, or even Access(!).

I think his point is that drivers side mirrors have a blind spot, which causes who knows how many accidents, but its illegal for manufacturers to make the mirrors in a different way, which is why K-Mart sells those little $2 stick-on convex mirrors. Seems like a lot more engineering time is spent on things like heated/cooled beverage holders than would be needed to design a better side mirror, I don't know the law but I'd assume thats why manufacturers haven't improved them. Of course, if somebody (the manufacturers) lobbied hard enough for it, I'm sure the DOT would change their mind.

...until idiot drivers who don't understand "objects in mirror are closer than they appear" start causing more accidents. Although I suppose the passenger side ones would be banned too if there was enough such stupidity to have a statistically significant impact on the number of accidents.

yes, certainly don't want to underestimate the idiots. However, I can't count how many times somebody has almost side-swiped me w/o checking their blind spot, or how many times I've had to hit my brakes a little harder b/c of something in front of me than if I did not glance to check my blind spot. Maybe they could just dedicate a 1-2" x 1-2" of your mirror (the bottom rightmost part that is usually just showing you a reflection of your door) to your blind spot, it would be small enough to keep people fro

I usually have mine adjusted so I can see a very tiny sliver of the door. Otherwise it is hard to gauge how far you are from something on the side of your car if you are backing up or pulling into a tight spot... is that right or am I missing something?

This is how I have heard you should adjust your mirrors. While sitting in your usual position lean your head to the left until it is almost against the window. Adjust your mirror until you can just see the back corner of your car. As a car passes you while driving, it should become visible in your sideview mirror just as it leaves your rearview and be visible out of the corner of your eye as it leaves your sideview. Seated comfortably with the seat all the way back I have to crank my mirrors all the way

But... what if I'm backing up close to something that's near the driver's side (or passenger side) of my car? Or it's below the level of the door panels and such? Mirrors are pretty much the only way to see those obstacles reliably, and judge your distance from them.

Maybe the idiot moniker was misplaced, and should have been self-attributed?

Ok, I look over my right shoulder... how do I figure out how close I am to the 1' high curb(maybe you spell it kerb?) on my left hand side? Stick my head out the window over my left shoulder? Or just use my mirror, and still be able to see cars beside me when I'm driving because I have it set to as wide an angle as possible while still keeping the very edge of my car in view?I may be an asshole, but I've never caused an accident in well over 10 years of driving, and I've stopped a couple chain-reactions f

doesn't sound right. you shouldn't be using your mirrors for backing up unless you're driving something 25ft long and have a CDL and so forth. Turn your head instead.

I for one find it much easier to get a feel for the car's dimensions using mirrors and not half-breaking my neck trying to look backwards. It's all preference really but don't go trying to say using mirrors are an incorrect way to do it.

Oh, for Christ's sake, you're not turning around and staring over your shoulder, you're doing a quick eye flick to determine whether the space is occupied by A) air, or B) something large, metal, and opaque that may do significant body damage if you run into it. If this takes you longer than a fraction of a second, you're doing it wrong.

To say there is reason specifically to not upgrade from IE6 is basically saying that they've developed a bunch of IE6-only web applications (with a bunch of ActiveX controls that require lax security settings perhaps.. or maybe just by developers that have never visited w3.org and have used Microsoft's [wrong] implementation of Javascript/HTML/CSS). They've screwed themselves on this one.. eventually as IE6 security updates stop coming (if they haven't already?) they're going to have endless problems when t

That's the whole point of published standards. Web designers should design to the standard rather than to the implementation quirks of any particular browser. If they design their apps to adhere to the standards rather than to the implementation quirks of a particular browser (or, worse, to the non-standard extensions used in a particular browser) then any browser can easily maintain backward compatibility with the standard.This does usually limit the availability of some features, but I've rarely seen mu

It's an issue of browsers not implementing the current standards fully nor correctly.

Browsers are still playing catchup to full XHTML/CSS compliance.

'Javascript' is a moving target, with incompatible dialects in each browser. ECMA standardized the language some years back but vendors keep adding new features [mozilla.org] that aren't available in other browsers yet.

It would be nice if web designers could at least use a baseline of available web standards of 2006 and know that all the major browsers would support them correctly. i.e. CSS2.x [w3.org], ECMA-262 v3 and E4X [wikipedia.org].

So it's not about designing websites to run with any browser that will ever exist in the future but a battle creating ones that run using the standards of today.:( IE 6 is 5 1/2 years old and should be regarded as a legacy platform.

I wish they would at least move to IE7 if they are not going to move to Firefox/Mozilla. To stay with IE6 is just unfair.

From the fine article:

Among the options the Transportation Department is weighing as a possible alternative or complement to Windows Vista are Novell's Suse Linux and, for a limited group of users, Apple's Macintosh hardware and software, he says.

With an open mind like that, I'd be surprised if they were not running some kind of Netscape browser already. Give him some time and he's discover Firefox, Debian, Open Office and all sorts of great stuff.

I used WinME in a small office setting, and aside from ONE old DOS-based app that required share.com to run to increase stack space and ME removing that little tool, I had ZERO issues with it. It served a purpose. It put people on notice that XP was coming, and changes were afoot: get with the program or get left behind, pure 100% DOS compatibility is gone. WIN32 or bust.

What this is really saying is that IT in the DOT wants all their systems to be running the same set of software. Wouldn't this just make sense from an efficiency point of view? I mean, they probably have bans on running MacOS 7.1, Gentoo and OS2 4.0 as well so I don't get the big news.

Did anyone seriously think large enterprise level customers would be jumping to Vista immediately, or even worse, letting their employees arbitrarily upgrade their own machines?

It is no small deal when a government agency specifically bans products internally for very specific reasons. Case in point is that we do a lot of business with the US Government. There are websites we MUST use for business purposes. IE7 specifically doesn't work with how they have been designed. This means that as IT Manager, I have instituted the same policy (IE7 ban) here.

The point is that there is a trickle down effect. Why do you think MS has fought the ODF issue in Mass. so hard?

An individual or family that has a fairly well-behaved Windows XP computer, decides not to run out and buy Windows Vista, or a new computer that has Vista preinstalled.Mostly because of the price, and secondly, because the Windows XP computer works well for them. And, they paid a good price for it, and would like to see if they can get some more miles out of it. A third, and perhaps major reason is that they are unclear as to "just what Vista does", besides look pretty.It would be Big News if Microsoft could say that Vista is a secure operating system, and that Vista spells the end of the viruses and trojans war.

The point is that there is a trickle down effect.

No one paid any attention to the individual or family that "decides not to run out and buy Windows Vista"

But, a major government department that has perhaps thousands of computers, making this decision not to upgrade, and giving reasons, gets everyones attention.

That individual or family now doesn't feel all alone, the U.S. DOT is on the same page as them.It's a matter of money for the individual, and a matter of money for the U.S. DOT, not to mention the other reasons they have, that are much more serious for Microsoft.
Everyone thinks the Government has plenty of money, and "buys $100.00 toothbrushes", etc.Money to burn, literally. So, perhaps their reasons are more about the "other problems", rather than the money.

What large organization or Government entity will be next?

Please don't let this story get on Drudge Report. [drudgereport.com]Yes, I know Drudge Report has a little text box where one can send in story links.Don't all rush in and do that at once!

I'm comforted by the military's decision not to upgrade to Vista, IE7 or Office 07 until later in the year or when service packs start coming out.

After a horrible experience with Vista on a brand new system, I've made the same decision. For the last few new MS 0Ss, I've been right on top of new versions, but this time they've really pulled a boner.

Ok, so the Department of Transportation can't make a business case for it. Big deal.

Allow me to strike some real fear into Microsoft. I work for a large Fortune 500 company with six digits of employees. While it's not our primary product, we write software as a lot of companies do.

When IE7 came out, I decided to use my work legal machine to install it to try it out. This resulted in a next day 7 am nastygram from my system administrator stating that I am authorized to install any software that isn't married to the kernel. Not only were we told not to use it, we were threatened not to install it OR ELSE I wouldn't be able to enter my time or access shared community sites internal to the company.

Because a lot of our company's tools don't work very nicely inside of it. So I'm still using IE6 and my company sure isn't going to upgrade my MS Office suite. Did I mention I write web applications and I can only test them in IE6 and Firefox?

So what would scare Microsoft more? The fact that a government department isn't using it or the fact that many companies like mine are still writing stuff for the old software hence forcing our customers to stick with IE6 or any version of Firefox?

Because a lot of our company's tools don't work very nicely inside of it. So I'm still using IE6 and my company sure isn't going to upgrade my MS Office suite. Did I mention I write web applications and I can only test them in IE6 and Firefox?

And you can make a business case for that. Face it -- you develop for your company based (hopefully) on a set of standards for what the company will use as its backbone technology. I worked at a Fortune 500 once, and they held on to Netscape 4.7 for the longest time, because it was deployed everywhere (globally), and everything was designed to work for it. It wasn't the greatest browser, but it was still better than IE5 at some critical things.

Change comes slowly at big companies/organizations, because it's due to economies of scale. The more machines you have to upgrade, the more applications you have to re-write to support the upgrades, the more the bottom line takes a pounding. Even if you manage to pull off a major, world-wide upgrade, you're going to spend the next couple of years fending off bugs that will turn up every day. Eventually you will get it stable -- just in time for the "next big thing".

Companies cannot afford to go chasing every new technology or upgrade that comes along, without risking the stability that IT works so hard to create.

I've never understood why companies base so many important applications off stuff like MS Office, or IE, or other apps that they don't have any control over. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to design applications in an environment that isn't as likely to stop working? I hear this complaint all the time. We can't change to OO.o, because we have a critical business app written in Excel. Why do companies continually use office suites and specific web browsers as development platforms? This never ends up being a good idea. I can understand web apps, but there should never be a reason to make the require something in IE or NS or any other browser. Just code them to work with standard HTML/CSS/JS and you won't have all these upgrade problems.

What should they use then? Write their own clone of Excel, for one specific purpose? Have you given any thought whatsoever to what it would take and how much it will cost to maintain?

Sigh. The question IN FULL is why they are using an office suite as a software development environment and application platform. 99% of the applications "written" in excel would have been far better developed as a standalone application and excel offers no functionality whatsoever over roviding the same functionality in a web

> Did I mention I write web applications and I can only> test them in IE6 and Firefox?

1. You can use something like VMWare Server and running it to test under different OSes/browsers etc. In fact that is what most people do.

2. I belive you can run IE7 without installing it. I've seen guides what you need to do make it work without actually installing it (just extracting files to your choosen folder, applying some patches on these files and it is it).

So what would scare Microsoft more? The fact that a government department isn't using it or the fact that many companies like mine are still writing stuff for the old software hence forcing our customers to stick with IE6 or any version of Firefox?

Or maybe all the DOT contractors who now won't be using Vista and IE7? It's not just a government department, it's all the companies that provide services to that department. Never mind the role government plays as an example for many businesses to follow wrt i

What are you talking about? There are breaks everywhere. You can use EXCLAMATION POINTs and QUESTION MARKs to mark a break. For shorter breaks, there are COMMAs. DOTs are not the only way to catch a break.

I'm sure some are wondering why this is news. The US government is Microsoft's biggest customer, by far. If many agencies cut back on Microsoft purchases it will hurt Microsoft a lot. I would imagine one department's decision may set a precedent for others. And even if not, many investors watch for government spending news when deciding Microsoft's stock value. So any change in government policy can have huge implications for Microsoft.

Well, I don't know about the whole government, but most of DoD uses Enterprise Licensing Agreements. These are contracts that provide access to classes of products rather than specific versions (say, 'desktop windows OS'). These run for multi-year periods before being renewed. Under an ELA, If you have XP, you are entitled to Vista IF you want it. Otherwise, you continue paying the license fee to keep the XP (OS) seat. This means that if no ELA customers adopt Vista, it doesn't effect MS at all, at lea

If you allow people to randomly upgrade their departments without considering the interactivity implications, you could inadvertently cause a major problem in a large government organization.

IMHO, it's a sound decision, and isn't a slap to microsoft at all. Everyone has to evaluate their own situation and upgrade if they feel it benefits them. Hell, having a win98 box (non-networked) and running a robot safely for the past 8 years is certainly safer than upgrading it. TFA was clearly biased, and made some idiotic remarks like "ZOMG, if the government doesn't buy vista, MS will go broke!" as if the millions of XP licenses are suddenly free.

So, hold all the "haha" tags, because a thorough evaluation of major upgrades on critical infrastructure makes some sense.

In general, businesses shouldn't be "early adopters" of any technology unless there's a compelling business reason. Any "early adoption" should be in testbed or non-critical environments.

I wish I could say "never upgrade without a compelling reason" but time marches on and lack of new software and the approaching end of vendor support can be very good reasons to stop using a product.

With that in mind, don't even consider using a Windows-based system unless it's been around 6 months UNLESS there is a very good reason, and strongly consider moving away from it at least 6 months before end-of-life.

Machines which are in special-purpose environments, such as machines which are not connected to any network, or which are adequately firewalled and whose connections with non-firewalled machines are heavily restricted, can continue to be used after end-of-life, but even these should be migrated to a vendor-supported environment or at least one where you have source code so you can fix problems yourself.

In general, businesses shouldn't be "early adopters" of any technology unless there's a compelling business reason. Any "early adoption" should be in testbed or non-critical environments.

Your advice directly contradicts MS's Vista release strategy.

If you recall, MS released Vista to businesses 3 months before the full commercial release. The goal was to get businesses to do a final beta test and even then, MS knew they still had big problems that needed to be addressed in SP1.

Every time MS come out with a new version of Office or Windows, the CIOs throw wobblies sending out warnings that no-one is to upgrade and they're going to stick with the existing version. They really should know better, all it takes is one person, usually somewhere near the top to install the new version, particularly of Office and the whole organisation then has to upgrade. Way to engineer that network effect.

Anyone's system breaks beyond economical repair. Must buy a new system. New system comes with Vista installed. Boss gets new system, subordinate gets bosses old system, because IT guy works for boss. Now boss sends out letter or email that has M$ new "enhanced" format of HTML or doc, and everyone has to upgrade.

This is a non-story. It is perfectly normal for any organization to not adopt a new OS for a significant amount of time after it is released, years, even. There are enough things to harp on Vista without making things up and pretending they have significance...

pssst: "Among the options the Transportation Department is weighing as a possible alternative or complement to Windows Vista are Novell's Suse Linux and, for a limited group of users, Apple's Macintosh hardware and software, he says."

It is very ordinary for a company (or government agency) to adopt a "wait and see" attitude toward new software. Most companies I've worked for will not install a new OS, new software, new firmware, new drivers or whatever until they've gone through at least one revision.

Recently because of Microsofts crappy handling of IE7 upgrades (flagging them as "critical updates"), we had a number of remote users on IE7 and our SSL VPN appliances simply would not work. I had to call a moritorium on upgrading to IE7 and deployed the Microsoft "prevent IE7 update" patch in order to stop these critical updates.

Then, I had to use early-release code for our Juniper VPN concentrator, which broke about half a dozen other things.... Finally, after a few weeks, new a firmware revision for the Juniper VPN came out which enabled me to get the box back to a stable state AND allow IE7 to be used.

But if we had simply called a "ban" on IE7 upgrades in the first place, it would have saved me a lot of headache and our company a lot of productivity.

This is not a "Microsoft sux" decision, but merely a business-case against early-release software that they would likely take whether it was Microsoft or Juniper or Cisco or Oracle or whatever...

Now, Microsoft's handling of the IE7 "critical update" bullcrap.... that falls clearly in the arena of "Microsoft sux".

I can think of one very big reason to upgrade to IE7 (unless Opera/Firefox is an option) and that's better web standards support. The web development community is going to drop support for IE6 very quickly (I give it approx. 6 months) because the standards support is so bad.

IE7 has a long way to go with this, but it's a massive improvement [msdn.com] over 6. It's not as if it costs any money, aside from bandwidth, to download it.

Obviously I would advise them to just use Opera or Firefox and switch to Linux while they're at it. But if that isn't an option they should at least take the free IE upgrade. The decision to not upgrade Office is a sound one though.

Completely agreed. Nobody has an excuse not to have at least IE7 if not another web browser installed (e.g. Firefox, Opera) for normal web usage.It'd make more sense to have IE6 for your intranet applications that require it along with Firefox or Opera (or anything other than IE really) for normal web usage than to stick with IE6 outright. IE doesn't seem like it was designed for the internet; it was designed for the intranet, and IE7 finally adds on sandboxing that makes it quite a bit more apt for inter

I work for DHS and we just migrated to XP / Office 2003. It is routine for government agencies (just about all major computer systems really) to wait a LONG time before upgrading.. Everyone already knew people wouldn't mass-migrate to Vista until at least SP1 was out...

I've heard of people saying "But I don't want version 5! I want you guys to make version 3 work the way it's supposed to!"

I really think a lot of nontechnical users couldn't care less about new features or redesigned interfaces -- what they've got works, and they don't want it messed with. So every time a software company adds a bunch of features or redesigns the interface, there's a good number of the user base that is going to be seriously ticked off because they have to retrain on all the new stuff.

Microsoft is one company that doesn't even come close to getting that. I've seen some of their smart house ideas for example -- their designs solve problems that people don't have to begin with. (Is anyone really in such a state that having the fridge track the RFID chips in your food packaging will improve things? Well, handicapped people and shut-ins, maybe, but for the vast majority of people it's overkill at best.)

I really think a lot of nontechnical users couldn't care less about new features or redesigned interfaces -- what they've got works, and they don't want it messed with.

Problem is that Microsoft wants to be all things to all people. They think all those people who've switched to Firefox will switch back by giving them a spangly new interface (and throw standards advocates a bone too). They panic about it, get all worried that losing IE usage share means losing their monopoly, the result is IE7.

The Microsoft upgrade virus model explained:1. Come out with new OS and release into the market environment.2. Stop upgrading older OS versions and tell vendors they won't have drivers etc. approved.3. Current OS gains foothold on market at a virulent rate, quashing older instances of the competition (the older OS version) and tout this slow but eventually exponential customer adoption a success.4. Evolve OS into the next version and release into the same environment and repeat steps 2 & 3.5. Market evo

Microsoft employs thousands of people as well - I wonder what their standing is on upgrading to Vista and associated products. Sure they get the software for free and the hardware for cheap, but it's still thousands of computers I bet they're replacing too.

And what's happening to all of these displaced PCs? Someone should build a cluster!

Schmidt says the Transportation Department hasn't ruled out upgrading its computers to Windows Vista if all of its concerns about the new operating system -- the business version of which was launched late last year -- can be resolved. "We have more confidence in Microsoft than we would have 10 years ago," says Schmidt. "But it always makes sense to look at the security implications, the value back to the customer, and those kind of issues."

emphasis added

Funny how the positives from the articles aren't mentioned.

I also like the use of the word "ban", which doesn't appear anywhere in the memo. No negative implications with that word.

Realistically, any decent sized organization will have the exact same policy written or not. The one thing that makes them special is that people found out about it. Give a few years, they'll have a migration strategy laid out and away they go.

Hopefully, that migration strategy won't be to Vista. One can dream...

I get sick of hearing all the lies and FUD that the anti-Windows crowd spreads all over the place. Microsoft , is the unsung hero of the computer world and internet commerce. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have the booming businesses bringing millions of dollars into the hands of simple and plain people like you and me all around the world. Microsoft beyond bringing startling innovation and major progress to the computer world has also indirectly created an infinite number of business and wealth creation opportunities with every PC out there whether in business or at home on your desk. That alone is the MOST compelling reason. By preventing the distribution of Microsoft's latest and greatest to the largest possible number of PCs, these sorts of actions are essentially trying to prevent the lubrication of the orifices of commerce. I plea with you to please reconsider your actions.

Our company has gone further than the DOT. Not only is upgrade not allowed but a PC with Vista is not allowed to connect to the corporate network. Our government customer has banned Vista from it's network too and we need to inter operate. The DOT is not alone. Many organizations are going to wait and do 6 or 12 months of testing first.

SAP Portal software doesn't work with IE7 without using a recent patch and huge orgs can't patch SAP without a shitstorm of trouble, so they just ban IE7 altogether. Oddly enough Firefox works with those versions of SAP Portal (although suffering from some minor rendering bugs causing very wide pages with scrollbars).

Well it's an slow starter out of the gate. I haven't seen anyone say that it's a failure other than die hard linux folks. BUT most of what I do read is that you should not run out and buy it and DON'T upgrade an XP installation, but wait till you get it pre-installed on your next computer, because dealing with the hardware necessary, and lack of drivers etc, is more than your joe user wants to handle. I have one machine with vista on it, and it is clearly marked as working with vista, and sometimes the 'w

Vista is a FAILURE! There, you have at least one person telling you its a failure that isn't a die hard Linux person. I cut my teeth on microsoft stuff and work for a Microsoft partner shop. I don't even run a Linux box anymore (though I did try it for a while). The few people I have heard from that said Vista is great were almost certainly paid by Microsoft to "voice their opinion" on the subject.

Hah, ok. I still am not convinced it's a failure, just a bumpy road. I wouldn't be very upset if it does turn out to be a failure, but there is this sneaky little lock in device called an enterprise agreement people have with microsoft, and then also bulk busniess contracts with dell etc, and one way or another those products will end up in all of those shops eventually. I hope it does fail, serves them right for not coming out with a new product for over 6 years, but I just don't think it ultimately will

Actually no, you won't. I visited the local chamber of commerce recently to renew my license tabs and happened to notice something odd about the screen on the desk behind the counter. It was running the Gnome desktop, default Ubuntu themed. I asked them about it and they said their office switched in early 2006 to all Ubuntu desktops. They are a branch office of the WDOT by the way. Apparently the database that Washington state uses is PostgreSQL too.

Your local chamber of commerce is a lot different than a major US agency like DOT, DOE, etc. Most large organizations, including government, restrict what users can install in order to minimize support requirements.

Maybe that is why they installed Linux... it is a great way to keep people from installing the game they bought at Office Depot.

people by and large have been writing, spreadsheeting, and making tedious powerpoint presentations with older versions of office just fine and dandy. Since 99.5% of what needs to be done can be done without spending more money, why bother to upgrade?

...you do realize that the entire reason they're doing this is to KEEP a monoculture, right? Because a monoculture is easy to admin. Having 15 different OS, while likely good from a security standpoint, is never going to be a viable option for any business (or government). Just look at Linux - its extreme diversity and customizability has always been its greatest strength and greatest weakness; I can almost guarantee you that the only way Linux will ever have a hope of stealing the crown from Windows will be to have a single distribution so consolidate market share that it's a monoculture of its own.